Warum läuft Herr R. Amok

This is a terrific movie. I have seen the unsettling ending of it years ago. Today I was watching it from DVD. My recollection of the ending was so strong that I remembered all small details.

Highly sensitively Fassbinder gives insight into the life of a man that runs amok. Fassbinder succeeds in showing the motives of a crazy amok run.

If you don't know any of Fassbinders movies you must be aware that this is different than anything you know. Fassbinder portrays a man that lacks self-awareness and is poor of showing his emotions and who does not do more than he is asked for in his job. Herr R. is slow in mind and words. And yet, all that does not accumulate to his amok run. What does is hidden behind a surface that Fassbinder discloses one by one... 9 out of 10.

The idea that the human being is a Kosmos of his own, is know since the times of Romantics, at last. The even stronger theory according to which the human was been created after God has become a common feature of Christian religion. However, it has taken almost two thousand years before the philosopher Gotthard Gunther has stated that between an "I" and and "Though" there is exactly the same qualitative difference as between the human and God. On therefore has not to travel to the edges of transcendence in order to experience what a con-texture border means, it is sufficient to learn that insight into a Thou is excluded on principal reasons. This turns out to be important in all those cases where even close friends of a human become shocked and react in a way similar to: we would never have thought that he could do that.

Another problem, perhaps in a certain perspective even more delicate, is the border between a deed in thought and a deed in fact. Many people kill others in their wishes, dreams, they even say it without meaning it. On the other hand, some people would never say it, but then there is a moment when they do it. What is it that causes the transgression between thought and deed? R.W. Fassbinder presents a fully uncommented, non-condemnatory approach in "Warum Läuft Herr R. Amok?" (1970). Up to a certain degree, the absolute free speech which gives the illusion of everyday-conversations observed by a candid camera, has the form of a Brechtian "Lehrstück", however, there is no wagging finger to sense in this movie. The spectator is elevated into the position of the judge - if he really still thinks that the deed of Herr R. can be judged after having watched and understood the movie. The spectator even becomes a part of the movie, without him the communication scheme is incomplete. He is the receiver of a message from whom not even an answer is expected, but a revision in thinking on the basis of which has been presented to him. "A good movie is a movie that does not stop when people come out of the cinema, but continues in their heads", Fassbinder said once.

Sometimes a film is not 'boring', it's actually a study on boredom as societal satire; a disarmament of psychological setting -- a slow-motion, funereal-paced race to the ugly punchline. The funniest jokes require patience and an ability to listen.

Fassbinder pulls it off marvellously in 'Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?', one of his best early films, from 1970. This particular punchline connects as hard as a blow to the back of the head.

If a life can only be understood backwards, this film parodies the theory by emulating it.

Fassbinder's nihilism knew no bounds.

Co-directed by the young Fassbinder (then only 25 years old) with his friend and producer Michael Fengler, 'Herr R.' shows Fassbinder's tendency to get up the nose of the middle class.

Here, in opposition to his more characteristically considered style, a shaky hand-held camera eavesdrops on the eponymous Herr R.(played to perfection by the great Kurt Raab) who is tediously seen at his work, with his wife, during a visit from his parents and the like, while slowly unwinding inside.

Long takes predominate and we are also let into the life of Herr R.'s pretty but equally vapid wife for whom he, in a most affecting scene, buys a record without knowing the singer or song title - much to the shameless merriment of the shop-girls who serve him. Fassbinder keeps the tension tightly wound throughout and it is this knowing sense of what to show and when to withhold that gives the greatest indication that this is the work of a man who was to become one of Europe's greatest film-makers since Ingmar Bergman.

No doubt, many will find the extreme sense of realism and boredom too oppressive but 'Herr R.' has proved to be highly influential on a much later generation of film-makers and still retains the power to provoke and unsettle.

They don't make great low-budget films like this anymore. Fantastic performance by Kurt Raab, very moving, delicate, intense. You can feel the chill run down your spine when you watch him slowly degenerating. Fassbinder at his early best.